


When I grow up... (I wanna be a princess)

by kewltie



Series: Magnetic [7]
Category: K-pop, Super Junior
Genre: Goong AU, M/M, Modern Royalty
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2018-11-29 03:10:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11431926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kewltie/pseuds/kewltie
Summary: Donghae becomes a prince(ss) much to his chagrin. [goong au]





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> snippets of a larger world. told in non-chronicle order.

“What?!” Donghae screeches loudly and slams his hands down on the table, rattling the silver wares and causing their food to tremble from the impact.

Miroo sighs wearily. “Donghae, don’t be so loud. You know your father has terrible hearing and his ears are delicate enough as it is.”  

“My hearing is fine and my hair isn’t delicious,” her father grunts between bites of grilled pork ribs.

Donghae lets out an annoyed groan. “Are you guys even listening to me?! I don’t want an arrange marriage! Who even does that anymore?! Did we go back a thousand years without me knowing?”

“You should be happy, your grandfather manages to ensnare a good catch for you this time,” she says calmly. “In this day and age, a man of a good linage like that doesn’t come regularly.”   

“I don’t even know the guy!” Donghae protests, waving his hands madly and hovering over her.

“You have seen Prince Hyukjae on TV before and in the news and you even learn about him in school.”  

“That doesn’t mean I know him, _mother_ ,” Donghae retorts heatedly.  

Miroo narrows her eyes and glares at him. “Don’t back talk me, young man,” she snaps, “and sit back down!”  

Startles, he sits back down in his seat gingerly. “I’m sorry,” Donghae says, recoiling a little. “But, I don’t just get what you guys are thinking at all marrying me off to a stranger.”

“What is there to understand? We want you to have a happy, healthy, and secure life and Prince Hyukjae will give you all of that and more.”

“You don’t know _that_ for sure though.” Donghae shakes his head in dismay.   

“That is why there’s a six months engagement period to hopefully get you two to work things out and fall in love,” she says, but if it were up to her they would be marry off in a month. However, there’s a lot of politic going into marrying a couple of nineteen years old kids and the Palace’s Public Relation Chief wants to ease the two of them into the idea of marriage and gets the public warm up to them to them first before they can get marry, which Miroo can’t argue with.  

“But haven’t you guys notice that’s we’re both guys!” he says, waving his hand in front of her as if she couldn’t see that fact.

Miroo picks up her tea and sips it before putting it back down. “Donghae,” she says, slowly and carefully, “didn’t you tell us you are gay when you were sixteen? Have that suddenly change without us knowing?”

Donghae flushes. “Well, no but I’m pretty sure the Prince isn’t gay though.”

“He’s bisexual by all accounts from the media,” Miroo recalls, like she was seriously going to marry her precious first born son to a person she know nothing about. Not even when he’s the Prince of Korea.  

“That doesn’t mean anything if Korea is not going to accept two men getting marry,” Donghae says pointedly.  

“Right now, people still think of Korea as country that is deeply rooted in tradition and archaic ways, but Korea is trying to establish itself a rejuvenated country that can stand atop of the world among countries like the US and Japan, so to show that had made progress they had passed the law allowing the gay marriage and the Royal Family set the precedent by letting their Crown Prince marry a man. This marriage would not only be important to us but to the Royal Family and Korea so it’s not a joking matter, Donghae."

Donghae lips part in stunned silent, finding no words to say respond back.

“I did my research,” Miroo explains, with a wave of her hand.

“W-what about the Crown Prince?” he asks once he found his voice again. “Did he agree to it too?”

“Yes, he was told two weeks ago before you.”

Donghae’s left eye twitches. “I’m not even going to ask why I was told last when goddamn Crown Prince was told weeks ago and when I’m supposed to be the other part of this union but, mother, you do realize that no matter how much you wanted a girl when you first got pregnant with me, I can’t grow a uterus and pop out a royal assbaby—”

“Mind your language that’s the Royal Family you are talking about,” she cuts in.

“—there’s no way I can continue the Royal’s bloodline and I’m pretty sure even with our technically today, you can’t impregnate a male,” he continues on.

“Donghae,” she starts but Donghae cuts her off.

“And even if you can, I don’t want to be pregnant! Ewe. All those birth videos we watched in senior high heath’s class turned me off of children for life.” He shudders.

“Donghae,” she rolls her eyes heavenwards, Donghae can be so dramatic sometimes, “If you actually pay attention to the current news, you would know that the Crown Prince has a sister and she will continue the bloodline. Her kid will be next heir to the throne.”  

“Oh,” he says, looking surprise and losing steam in his argument.

“Are you giving up now?” she asks quirking up her brow.

Desperate, Donghae abruptly turns to her husband. “ _Faaaaather_ ,” Donghae whines, his lips protruding out in a pout seeking help from his other parent. Miroo rolls her eyes; Donghae has always been a daddy’s boy.

Her husband stopping eating for a second and gives Donghae his full attention. “I think he’s a good match for you,” her husband’s says, smiling brightly. .

“Really, you too?!” Donghae demands despairingly, betrayed by his own father. Even she raises an eyebrow at that but she’s not going to question it if it helps shut Donghae up and accept his fate already.

“So?” she asks, smirking. Knowing full well she got him now.

“Ugh, fine, fine. I’ll see how these six months will go. We’ll probably end up killing each other or something and you’ll come to regret this, but you got to answer this first.”

Miroo sighs; it’s never ending when it comes to Donghae. “What is it now?”

“How did this engagement came to bear fruit?” he asks.

She ponders if she should tell him, but there’s no point in keeping it a secret any longer. “It was your grandfather who’d arranged everything and the King agreed to it,” she says.  

“Hmm,” he muses, and then he lights up, “So how did grandfather trick the King? Did grandfather blackmail him or something, because there is no way the King would let a no-name commoner marry his first born son.”

“Don’t be silly, Donghae, your grandfather would never use such an underhanded method,” she sniffs delicately, and finishes with a, “It was a card game.”

“Ugh,” he clenches a fist full of his hair and scratches his head furiously, “I can’t believe my marriage was decided over a stupid card game.”

“Look at it this way, sweetie, at least your future husband is not some unscrupulous criminal.” Miroo’s father usually means well, but it doesn’t always work out and back when she was young, her father found her a skivvy man and she’d only managed side step marrying him, who may or may not be part of the Korea’s organized crime family, thanks to him being impaled by a pole. But, this time her father came through for them and found someone who could bring their family out of ruin.

“That’s not comforting, mother.” Donghae sulks and turns his attention to her other son. “Kyuhyun backs me up here a little here, you been silent long enough.”

Kyuhyun pauses in his eating and places his bowl of rice down and the chopsticks on top of it, probably been enjoying the one-man theatrical theater that Donghae had played out in their dining room. “Well I, for one, agree with Donghae since we’re not back in the time where our spouses are determined by our parents anymore,” he says, casting a glance at Donghae and then he smirks, “but didn’t you always say you wanted to be a princess, and now that you’re going to marry the Crown Prince, here’s your chance to be the Princess Donghae that you has always dream of.”

“I was four, you ass,” Donghae hisses and tackles his brother to the floor and they end up rolling around on the floor, wrestling each other.

Miroo doesn’t bother getting up from her seat. “Donghae get off him and Kyuhyun don’t punch your brother!” she shouts at them and they proceed to ignore her and continues their wrestling match that quickly devolving into an all out fighticuffs.  

“I can feel my migraine starting up again,” Miroo says, palming her forehead and shakes her head tiredly, “that child will be the death of me. How will he survive being Prince Consort?”

“Donghae will be fine, dear,” her husband says, trying to console her and pats her shoulder comfortingly.   

“I’m not concern about Donghae,” she reluctantly admits, watching Donghae puts Kyuhyun in a headlock. “I’m more worry about the future of Korea with Donghae as the Prince Consort because who knows what kind of trouble he’ll stir up.” At the end of the day, Miroo wonders if this marriage is a good thing after all, since it is Donghae they’re talking about and she knows her son very well. She shudders at the thought of turning on the TV and finding her son’s pictures plaster all over the news with the headlines that range from offending visiting dignitaries to starting an international incident.

If there’s anyone who could accidently start global dispute it would be her son and she is immediately reminded of the time when he was in his first year of senior high, and how he hadn’t like his new school’s tightly regulated dress code and conduct. After, several months of strain relationship between the school and Donghae, it all came to a head stop when he arrived at school with hair dyed blond, earrings on his ears and nose (she was happy to found out later that they were fake), and tattoos (also fake) and ended up starting a student revolt. In the end, she and her husband were called in for a very awkward and tense conversation with the principal where Donghae was suspended for two weeks but the school’s system was change from then on.

“Don’t worry, we can trust Donghae,” her eternally optimistic husband says cheerfully, “he won’t fail us.”

She glances back at her pile of mess that are her sons, Donghae now has Kyuhyun in an arm lock and Kyuhyun looks like he’s about to expire from the pain. “I—I give, I give,” Kyuhyun chokes out between each gasp of air. “You win, just let me go please.”

Donghae abruptly lets go of Kyuhyun’s arm and while Kyuhyun, curls himself into a ball clutching his arm in pain, Donghae stands up over Kyuhyun. “Yea! Who’s the man?!” Donghae says, pounding his chest victoriously.  

“Korea is doom,” she mumbles hopelessly.

 


	2. Where the Winds Blow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sixteen days. Just over two weeks. Half a month.

Sixteen days. Just over two weeks. Half a month.

Donghae counts his day backward from the moment he woke up alone and stared into the empty space where Hyukjae would have lie till the day he can reach over and his touch is anchored by Hyukjae’s presence. He measures the distance between Beijing and Seoul in the stretch of lonely nights he spent in their bedchamber, searching for traces of Hyukjae’s in the long gone warmth of their sheets and the scent that Hyukjae left behind in their shared bed.

In his waking hours, he haunt the hallow halls of the Palace, listless and purposeless, seeking Hyukjae’s ghost in its walls.

He wears his longing like a well-used and worn out coat, tugging it closer to him whenever the thought of missing Hyukjae stir up a winter storm that run a chill right straight through his heart.  And it must have been so obvious to those around him because even his attendants are careful with him, giving him space to breathe as though he was afflicted with an illness that can be cure with enough time.

Donghae knows there’s a word for this, for this kind of dependency that has him all twisted up inside without Hyukjae by his side, but they had spent nearly a year locked in each other orbit and he can’t remember a time when Hyukjae wasn’t a phone call away and he couldn’t breach the distance between them with a single step.

It’s a strange feeling to grasp when they had spent their early days as reluctant strangers stuck in an unwanted arrangement and then later allies against the confined of the Imperial Palace and it’s warring occupants who wear a smile on their face even as they have a knife at each other throat. It was an uneasy alliance at first but Hyukjae’s steadfast devotion to his family and country and his determination to make any unsatisfactory situation his own slowly grinded down Donghae’s walls of indifference.

“This isn’t your war,” Hyukjae had said from the very beginning. “And I will do everything in my power to keep it that way.”

It was meant to be an assurance, a promise, that Donghae wouldn’t get dragged into the political strife that plagues the Imperial Palace and Hyukjae’s tumulus relationship with his family but as much as this has never been Donghae fight from the start, Hyukjae is his husband and Donghae couldn’t abandon him not when Hyukjae had done everything to support Donghae and keep him safe and away from the political machination of the Court.

It’s that kind of thing of thing that can cause someone to be halfway in love and on his way to completely and irreversibly gone for this wayward prince, that he finds himself revisiting all their old conversations and playing back Hyukjae’s voicemail, chasing remnants of Hyukjae wherever he could find.  

But even with the waning phone calls and texts it does nothing to abate this loneliness that sits heavy in his chest.   

The last thing Donghae remembers is Hyukjae telling him to “stay out of trouble,” and that he’ll “be back before you know it,” and a hasty kiss delivered to his forehead before Hyukjae left on his diplomatic excursion to Beijing.  

And now Donghae is set adrift without his anchor to keep him grounded.

He finds himself drifting through the palace with no singular destination at sight and eventually he stops at a lone courtyard, far enough from the interior of the palace that he spot no other occupant but himself and his attendants.  

He quickly dismisses them and they reluctantly left him to his lonesome.

Winter has arrived in Seoul, casting a blanket of snow wherever Donghae can see. There are bare bones of the trees rooted in its spot and not single green foliage seem to survive the harshness of a freezing January sweeping in but the coldness doesn’t touch Donghae.

He finds the landscape to be hauntingly beautiful in its bareness, the scenery matching the hallow ground of his frozen heart.   

He walks toward the edge of the border of the Imperial Palace, where on the other side of it is the world that Donghae had previously occupied before his marriage with Hyukae.

Donghae looks up and up, craning his neck up to see at top of the bricks and mortars that fence the palace from the outside world. Have the walls of the Imperial Palace always been that high? Or had the months Donghae spent in here made him shrink into himself, he wonders.

When Donghae first glimpse at the Imperial Palace in simpler times he saw the confine of the walls, caging the inner sanctum of the Royal Family, and had thought, almost wistfully, who were they trying to keep out? But now he knows that now was the wrong question to ask.

It should really have been: _who were they trying to keep in?_

Once upon a time Donghae had looked upon this place behind a pixel screen and printed page of textbooks and like all eyes that lay upon it he was drawn to its grandeur and beauty, filled with untold promises. Like some fantastical tale he read in his childhood, he dreamt of a benevolent king, a beautiful and generous queen, and a handsome prince waiting to find his one true love.

That romantic notion died along the day Hyukjae had offered him everything he could ever dream of and in return shackled him to a loveless marriage. When the main gate of the Palace closed behind him on the eve of his wedding night and with Hyukjae and his future in front of him, Donghae said goodbye to his freedom and his halcyon days.

His only reprieve is that he isn’t alone, that Hyukjae too shares his fate. They’re both prisoner behind these walls.

In the first few months that Donghae had arrived at the Imperial Palace he found the loneliness to be unbearable, the rules and strict protocols were suffocating and the people showing kindness and politeness even as their motives and ambitious stay as hidden as an iceberg.

But Hyukjae made it all tolerable.

Now that Hyukjae left on his trip, this place once again become too stifling—his every move watch and reported to Hyukjae’s enemies, his isolation extended and confined to only those that is allow to associate with him without any political agenda, and he has nobody else to fall back on.

Donghae reach a hand out to touch the brick barrier. Pressing his hand up against it, he muses if he can actually scale the wall.

“Looking to escape already?”

Donghae abruptly pulls back from the wall and turns around, eyes going wide as he catch sight of Hyukjae standing in front of him.

There are dark shadows under his eyes and with his hair mussed and his tie loose he looks like he had just woken up and threw on his clothes before rushing over here but he’s still the most beautiful thing Donghae has seen.

“What no welcome back?” Hyukjae demands when Donghae still haven’t said anything, arms cross and brow raise. “No hi? No good to see you? Nothing at all? Not even—”

Donghae’s legs propel him forward before Hyukjae could finish his sentence and he launches himself across the field, landing on Hyukjae with a loud thump as Hyukjae fall under Donghae’s weight and taking Donghae with him.

Hyukjae isn’t supposed to be here. He’s not even supposed to be back yet. There’s still another five days to Hyukjae’s trip but if he’s a figment of Donghae’s imagination than—than his mind have been that desperate and cruel to conjured up Hyukjae for Donghae’s sake only to take him away later.   

But, Donghae pressing his head against Hyukjae’s chest, he hears the loud thump-thump of Hyukjae’s heart flushing his system, Donghae knows this is real. _Hyukjae is real_. And he’s here.

They lay there silently as Donghae tries to burrow his way into Hyukjae’s chest and never leave and Hyukjae seems to content to let him.

But it’s not long before Hyukjae once again break the silent.

 “You’re practically frozen,” Hyukjae snaps, touching Donghae’s cheek and pulling his gaze upward to Hyukjae’s own. “Why aren’t you wearing your coat, you idiot.” The chiding is harsh and familiar but it’s the most comforting words Donghae has heard in a while.

“I miss you,” Donghae says instead, squeezing Hyukjae waist tightly.

Hyukjae doesn’t deign him a reply, instead he pushes Donghae off of him and pulls Donghae up alongside him. He takes off his overcoat and wraps it around Donghae’s shoulder with Donghae barely offering any resistance. He peels off his gloves and shoves it at Donghae. “Here,” he says, expression unchanging but his action speak for everything else.

And Donghae stares at it for second before taking it and putting it on his apparently numb hands now. Hyukjae takes one of Donghae's gloved hand in his and pulls him toward the Imperial Palace once again. Donghae doesn’t look back at the wall once as they make their way back inside.

“Welcome home,” Donghae finally says, lacing their fingers together as the warm finally sink into his frozen fingers and spread throughout his body, and for the first time in a long time he means it too.

Hyukjae squeezes his hand and that is an answer in itself.

Sometimes home isn’t always a place, it’s in the furrow of Hyukjae’s brows when he’s thinking too hard, the twitch of his lips when he’s resisting a smile, and it’s in the warmth of his hand over Donghae’s on a cold winter day like this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> goong is one of my favorite manhwa series so !!!!! one of the thing i love about it is how it really focus on how the mc went through the isolation from her family and her old life, the rigid and rules of the palace, and the strained and conflict of her relationship with the prince and everyone around her that it took a lot of toll on her mental and emotional health. BASICALLY SHE WASN'T HAPPY. like here is the fairy tale situation she landed herself in, bethrothed to the crown prince by her granda's previous agreement and she could have it all but real life isn't all like the romance novel and it suck horribly. so yea hyukjae isn't donghae's cure all, he's unhappy obviously but hyukjae's presence make it bareable bc he's not alone at least. and i like the constrast of this fic with the first one i wrote for goong au where donghae is such a vibrant char but here's he more washout imiation of himself but ya know still has some color to him still.


End file.
